Is this like some singles bar where 80% of the people are male?
I for one would like to find a hustler who really knows how to hustle.
I don't want to be snarky, but I'm having a hard time resisting. Two technical co-founders have shuttered a business and moving on to work "hard on a new product which we're super excited about." It's great that you're super excited about it, but wouldn't it even be more exciting if you had a business minded co-founder who could demonstrate the market opportunity, or lack thereof, and make sure the time, energy, and sweat equity you're dumping into this will have some payback?
I do appreciate the use of "'technical cofounder' and not 'developer.'" I think a lot of technical co-founders that also write code have been annoyed to hell by the non-technical business people who don't understand the effort required to realize their big awesome idea.
I doubt there's a business minded co-founder who could have told us the direction we should be going in without learning what we did about hiring first.
You're absolutely right, and I agree with this statement. I'm left with the feeling that you don't think this could have been learnt without first writing code, testing the application, and learning the expensive way.
It's tough, awkward, and often frustrating, but you can connect with potential users ("prospects" or "strangers") and flesh your idea out without writing a line of code. People are willing to talk, but you have to approach them -- and go outside of your comfort zone to find them.